I worked, for many years, while going through Cuesta and then the teaching credential program at Poly, for Russ and Rich Bullock, who owned Laguna Liquors, on the site of today’s Laguna Grill. I liked most of my college jobs: working for the Missouri journalism school in a work-study job, stocking groceries at night (we were “Night Stockers”), except when a fellow worker jacked a load of maple syrup too high and thirty cases came crashing down, working on the “wham-bang machine” at the 3M plant. 3M makes Scotch Tape. We were making guided missile parts.

But I liked Laguna Liquors the best.

My bosses, Russ and Rich were both born in the little red house at the very end of French (now Madonna) Road, and they were two of the best bosses I’ve ever had.

I was reminded of all this because I saw another favorite boss of mine, Randy Bullock, and his wife Barb this weekend.

Back then, in the 1970s, the liquor store was pretty much the only market in the area. We were also the local bank, where folks came in to write twenty-dollar checks, which was an immense amount of money back then.

We were also part-time and totally unqualified psychiatrists: we got to know everyone for blocks around with a drinking problem, a marriage problem, a kid problem, a job problem.

We did a lot of listening, and we were, most of us, anyway, just liquor-store clerks in our twenties.

We also had a lot of fun, which frequently involved post-hours runs down to the Laguna Village Inn or the Oak Room.

We were engulfed by two waves of children in the afternoons: one from C.L. Smith and the second from Laguna Middle School, who swarmed around the candy rack like angry badgers. We even sold Pop Rocks and–I still can’t stand him–Reggie Bars.

This is where, actually, I found out that I liked kids, which is a good thing, because I spent thirty years teaching high school and liked them just as much at the end of my career as I had at the liquor store.

The wave Sunday mornings at 7 a.m. was almost as bad as the candy rush on weekday afternoons. There were always grouchy elderly men, some of them in their carpet slippers, lined up waiting for us to open so they could have their massive Sunday editions of the L.A. Times or the San Francisco Examiner/Chronicle.

But I didn’t like it when you realized an older customer wasn’t coming back. The philosophical Fuller Brush salesman took his own life. The sweetheart lady you were never supposed to sell to died of cirrhosis anyway.

The salesmen and route men were fascinating. Chet the Chip Man was an old Arroyo Grande High Classmate; Bob the Bread Man was the fastest stocker I’d ever seen; Tim from All-American beverage was the courteous, kind man who would someday become my brother-in-law. Brownie the Whiskey Guy once beckoned us into the back room, shushed us as if he were the Manhattan Project, and and poured each of us a blended whiskey that was going to be the next big thing.

It was so interesting, to me, as a young fellow, to be so integrated into the life of a neighborhood. I liked Mr. G.D. Spradlin, the general who orders Martin Sheen into the jungle in “Apocalypse Now.” He smoked Lark 100s.

I liked the elderly British couple who came down from See Canyon and loaded a shopping cart with Swanson’s Frozen Fish and Chips.

I liked the Poly professors mostly but not the arrogant ones. (Why aren’t you at Yale, you jerk?)

I learned that the favored breakfast of house painters is beer and Dolly Madison doughnuts.

I hated Hallowe’en. How do you card someone who looks like Wolfman?

I liked the hippies, gently edging into middle age, who once came to protest Diablo Canyon. One of them said Willie Nelson was coming, but he didn’t show up at the liquor store. We were sad.

I loved–absolutely loved–Willie the Golfer, an immensely charismatic black man who discovered the sport at the little nine-hole Laguna course. Willie had forearms the size of hams, and I wondered when he hit the ball if he didn’t turn it into powder.

I liked Forrest the Southern Pacific guy but never, ever figured out why he bought Burgie beer, which was incredibly cheap and tasted a little like what I thought embalming fluid might taste like (Budweiser was $1.69 a six-pack, by the way).

I used to hide from some customers, like Bob the Sherry Drinker, who did a dead-on imitation of Sgt. Schultz from “Hogan’s Heroes” but then liked to ramble, a lot and pretty loud.

I liked to listen to Russ talk about growing up in San Luis Obispo and delivering Golden State Creamery milk to the Red Light girls. I liked to listen when the old-timers came in to tell old, stories and complain about the guvmint and/or the mule deer who ate their garbanzo beans.

So I did a lot of listening, and I learned empathy, and I learned history, and I became a history teacher which is, after all, about telling the stories you’ve learned and telling them well. Working in that liquor store was one of the most important parts of my education.